Lapu Lapu

In English

“There was an island called Mauthan [Mactan], the king of which was greatly esteemed as a fine man in the arts of war and was more powerful than all his neighbors …” – Sebastian del Cano, 1522

Five hundred years ago through the valor of just one man, Spain was forced to postpone for about 45 years the plan to colonize our country. Thus, there once were two more generations of our forefathers who lived free from the yoke of Spain, thanks to this warrior. The hero is none other than the valiant Lapulapu. He was one of the two chiefs of Mactan Island in the Visayas. He was responsible for defeating the head of the Spanish expedition to Southeast Asia, the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan. Lapulapu and his men vanquished Magellan in the Battle of Mactan on April 1521.

Earlier, the South American empires of the Maya and the Aztecs quickly fell to the Spanish conquistadors. Greatly encouraged by easy successes, Spain subsequently set its sights on Southeast Asia. The first stop of the Spanish armada under Magellan was in our islands. Little did they know that they were in for a humiliating and crushing defeat. And so in our country the conquistadors’ experience was an entirely different story. From Lapulapu’s time and down through the centuries, resistance and revolts plagued Spain’s colonization of our country. Eventually through divide-and-conquer, Spain was able to control most of the coastal areas and lowlands. But not all of them. In the south in Mindanao and Sulu, these places were never really controlled by the Spaniards. In Luzon and in the Visayas, the highlands were likewise never controlled by the colonizers.

The Battle of Mactan

What we know about Lapulapu was mostly written by those who survived or who had first hand info about the Battle of Mactan. In spite of being Lapulapu’s own enemies, their writings contain nothing negative about Lapulapu. Rather, it’s the noteworthy qualities about him that can be gleaned: his leadership, courage, tactical prowess, and his principles.

The Battle of Mactan can be easily seen as having been designed by Lapulapu the way he’d like to unfold it. Through psy-war, he was able to steer Magellan into attacking during low tide. This rendered the artillery in Magellan’s ships out of range, unable to support Magellan’s landing party. This also made Magellan and his men wade a long distance in the uneven reef flats. When Magellan finally got to the shore, Lapulapu attacked from three directions: front and flanks. This is a classic maneuver that every battle commander would dream of, and Lapulapu accomplished exactly this. Individually, Lapulapu’s men did not fight mindlessly; rather, they targeted with their fire-hardened bamboo spears and poisoned arrows the unprotected areas of Magellan’s men. As Magellan’s chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote, “The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare.”

Kampilan Sword

Lapulapu was seen by his enemies not just as courageous and a good tactician, but as a principled man as well. When he was being forced to bow down to the King Battleof Spain and to the Cebu raja, Humabon, Lapulapu did not succumb to the threat. His answer was [Pigafetta speaking], “They replied that if we had lances they had lances of bamboo and stakes hardened with fire.” One can easily imagine the deep respects and admiration Magellan’s chroniclers had for Lapulapu, as they recorded Lapulapu’s defiant reply. And when the Spaniards through Humabon tried to ‘bribe’ Lapulapu into recovering Magellan’s body after the battle, Lapulapu’s principled answer was, “We will not give away the captain’s body for all the riches in the world, because his body is the trophy of our victory against invaders of our shore”. Once again, Magellan’s chronicler can not hide his admiration for Lapulapu.

The victory of Lapulapu over the Spaniards was surely decisive and overwhelming. Thus shortly after the Battle of Mactan, Humabon and his Cebuano allies plotted to exterminate the Spaniards whom they originally sided with. One and a half years later, only one ship of the armada was able to limp back to Spain. Sebastian del Cano, the ship’s captain, reminiscing about Lapulapu said: “There was an island called Mauthan [Mactan], the king of which was greatly esteemed as a fine man in the arts of war and was more powerful than all his neighbors …”

Note: The planned colonization of our country began in earnest only in 1565, in Cebu, 44 years (two generations) after Lapulapu defeated Magellan. One generation is commonly regarded as spanning 20 to 25 years. And the Spaniards’ subjugation of Manila happened only after one more generation, in 1588, only after the Tondo Alliance led by Rajah Sulayman was defeated by the Spaniards.

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